William Butler Yeats by Anthony Bradley (review)

Book Reviews 107 have used a tenn like "characteristics" rather than "archetypes," since the latter lenn nonnally promises some kind of psychological analysis. About half of Winkler's first chapter is devoted to two types of clowns, the butt (the unconscious clown) and the knave (the conscious clown). Butts are distinguished into lout, naive simpleton, braggart , pedant. and old clown. Knaves are parasites, intriguers, shrews, tramps. "The clown ". exploits all kinds of social failings for the purpose of comedy... {;] he works with low comic techniques , exploits physical, bodily (sic) actions, primitive or primary jokes, and makes use of extraordinary or grotesque exaggeration in his art." She distinguishes "fools" from "clowns" and does not treat those wise, witty characters in herstudy. Winkler's application of her "system" to Anglo-Irish drama excludes plays by Yeats, George Fitzmaurice, and Denis Johnston which one might expect to see covered because she believes the "clown" types in their plays are really "fools," wise and witty characters . The playwrights she does treat, in addition to Boucicault and Beckett, are Shaw, Lady Gregory, Synge, and O'Casey. Once again, Winkler's research has been admirable , but one finds no clear discrimination between what has "oft been thought" about these writers and what Winkler is asserting for the first time. The chapter on Boucicault opens with a series of truisms about the roots of modern drama in the nineteenth century, about the nature of melodrama, about the stage Irishman, and about Boucicault's influence on O'Casey, Synge, and others. The chapter on Shaw proposes that, with the exception of Androcles, Shaw did not employ clown figures in major roles. Again, does Winkler believe this is an original opinion about Shaw? Aod so on for the rest of the book. Once one is on to Winkler's set of clown characteristics, one can predict her application of these to particular plays. The whole business becomes very mechanical and uninteresting, One would have preferred some charts, perhaps, which could have reduced the size of the thesis by half. Just for the record, Lady Gregory, Synge, O'Casey, and Beckett have clown characters in central roles, Synge, one is told, has "a certain streak of violence or brutality" in his plays, and he "avoided simple or one-sided moral or social judgments." (The writing throughout has this sort of redundancy.) O'Casey is "writing in the tradition of popular theatre," and critics have recognized "the impurity of O'Casey's tragedy" and labeled it "tragicomedy." About Beckett one learns that his is a "laughter of negation" as opposed to O'Casey's "affinnative laughter," and that most characters in Beckett's plays are "seen in a comic perspective." It is hard to imagine a book 00 clowning which utterly lacks a sense of humor. This study is saved from total portentousness only by the necessary quotations and by references to real clownish behavior, ARTHUR E. McGUINNESS, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS ANTHONY BRADLEY. William'Butler Yeats. New York: Frederic Ungar 1979, Pp. 306, illustrated, William Butler Yeats is the latest book in a series thus far misleadingly entitled World Dramatists: the thirty dramatists represented are all European or American. The series emphasizes "drama as one of the performing arts" rather than as literature to be read, and [08 Book Reviews it is directed toward the student and general reader. Inclusion of Yeats in the series is noteworthy because until recently the generally accepted critical view has been that Yeats's plays are untheatrical and esoteric. This book is consistent with a critical reevaluation of the plays begun in the mid-70s and with three well-received New York productions of Yeats's plays within the last year. It includes material which by its nature implies the viability as perfonned works Yeats himself always believed the plays had: there are numerous photographs of productions, descriptions of first performances. reviews and the author's evaluations of the plays as theatrical events. The book also, more predictably, includes an account of Yeats's life and work, of Yeats and the Abbey Thealre, and descriptions of the actions of the plays, their themes, and their sources. There is a very useful last chapter on...